Broadsword56

Mamma mia! Fuser, I like your real-life Sicily distant ground much better than the original CMFI one. Very atmospheric. Please post it. The "Tunisia" one is very nice, but on my El Guettar map I've actually been using "desert_horizons" from a different BFC game (I think it was CMSF?) in and they seem to be a perfect fit for Tunisia. The Afghanistan horizons IMHO don't work in Tunisia because they're actually TOO mountainous and snowy. And since we're on the subject of distant horizons, skyboxes, or whatever you call them...One I've asked modders to experiment with for a long time is a "D-Day beaches" horizon for Normandy. Here's the idea: Instead of the standard Normandy horizon on all 4 sides, this mod would make one side of the map an ocean horizon -- maybe even with the faint silhouettes of the invasion fleet off in the distance (captured from an archival photo). Maybe one could set this horizon to appear on the N,E, W, or S sidejust by changing the name of the file -- although in Normandy I think it would be the E. This would be a great mod to use with D-Day scenarios close to the coast, Pointe du Hoc, etc.

Are you still planning to do the North Africa house/mosque building? Just curious, since you ran into that roof issue and I was going to wait to include it in my Tunisia modpack if it's still in the pipeline.

Prove it, oh boastful one.

That does sound cool. If you could have a 200 foot tall object, you could stage those those climactic scenes from the old sci-fi movies where Godzilla faces off against Army tanks and artillery and MGs...and, just like in the movies, the ordnance would have absolutely no effect on him.

Post something to share if you make any further discoveries please, Ian!

Thanks so much for the tutorial on this technique. I've saved it to my "mapping tricks and tips file," and it will come in very handy for gullies and drainage ditches at places like Holland, Salerno, etc.

How I love these videos. As good as it gets. But I have to laugh at how the Colonel's videos always have him come out looking like a tactical genius...can anybody beat this guy? Now that's something I'd like to see: All his excellent planning, the action begins, and then he's "WTF!? My platoon is falling back in chaos. My flank is turned..."

This is a brilliant idea. I sure hope the BFC folks can consider something like this and that the CM engine might be capable of handling this type of "stacking" along interior or exterior building walls some day. After all, we already see troops in CM2 assume a somewhat similar behavior when they're on a road -- they avoid the middle of the street and stack along one side or split and advance along both sides, in column formations. The tac Ai also already has something in it that makes troops sense fences and walls. So maybe the coders can build on that existing capability somehow, as a work-around to improve urban combat within the existing action square framework of the game engine.

Please explain a bit about what these are -- are they objects that look like vehicles (an M10 and a German HT) but are just inanimate objects we can place on maps? If so, amazing that you were able to do this. I'm not sure how I would use them, but if this is possible then what I'd really like most would be things like wrecked cars, dead cows, tents, etc.

That's fantastic. Well, I hope you can make some wrecked gliders for Market-Garden then, if BFC doesn't already provide those in the CMBN module to come.

+1 to Ian's analysis of the sad state of affairs when it comes to CMx2 and urban combat. The real-life tactics just don't work in the game. And it's sad because in most other types of terrain, the real-life tactics do work, or at least work reasonably well enough. No other 3D game I know has ever cracked this particular AI problem. In Achtung Panzer:Operation Star, which some on these forums have said rivals CMx2, infantry AI is so poor that AFVs can drive unsupported through villages and kill all the infantry hiding in the buildings. Some FPS games can provide amazingly realistic and detailed urban combat situations, but then the experience usually is only as good (or bad) as the humans controlling the individual soldiers. All we can do is hope that BFC finds some breakthroughs in coding and tac AI to address these.

Looks great now on my Tunisia map -- thanks Tempestzzzz!

I'll let the Africa TO&E grogs answer that one in detail, but it seems to me that a great deal of pre-1943 action in NA is feasible once we have Commonwealth troops and kit in CMFI. Add a few more desert uniform mods, the adobe building mod, and "Bob's your uncle." Of course certain specific battles might not be doable, if they used, say, the Grant tank and some of the earlier AFVs. But you could certainly do lots of early CW vs. Rommel battles where the Stuarts ("Honeys") fought German Mk II and III tanks or Italian stuff. The major work would getting the OOBs right for earlier periods and formations. But remember: We can make any TO&E manually, save it as a scenario file, and then use the "import campaign units" function to get that into new scenarios without having to create it from scratch each time. Once we have German paratroops in CMFI for mainland Italy, that also opens the possibility of Crete. I'd love to see that. Maps are already feasible with what we already have in CMFI. My only wish there would be a terrain mod to make Heavy Rocks a bit whiter instead of gray -- to get that authentic "parsley sprinked over feta cheese" look that the rugged Cretan hills have. And that NA adobe building, with a white paint job, would look right at home in Crete too.

I don't mind the roof corruption that much -- they could be drying dates or something up there :-) But if it can be fixed eventually, I'm all for it!

Fuser, you've revolutionized the game once again! Looking forward to these modded terrain textures! +1 to the comment about the heavy rocks -- if there is a way to vary the sizes/shapes a bit more so they're not so regular and symmetrical, that would be ideal.

Thanks Fuser, but the sand in it now looks just fine. The only really glaring omissions in the mod pack are a North Africa building, and some other types of palm trees besides the skinny coconut-style palm that LLF made for his South Pacific mod. Aside from those, CMFI really provides almost everything necessary to make North Africa maps.

Either one works and looks OK, but the Shock Force sand does have that more desert-like rippled windblown effect and it more whitish than brownish. In my Tunisia mod pack I have LongLeftFlank's CMFI Ground Sand Mod, which I think he took from the same source because it has the same rippled look.

If either of you, or anyone else reading this thread, wants to try my WIP Tunisia map/scenario and modpack, just PM me. It's done but I'm just finishing the second half of a playtest of the El Guettar battle. The terrain is usable for anything in Tunisia, circa winter/spring 1943. So you can just cut it up, re-work the elevations and tweak the terrain tiles as you like to get some good starting terrain for North Africa. (If you want it to be in Egypt or Libya, just add more sand and rocks and get rid of the green grass.)

What nice too, is that some of the stock CMFI buildings could work in Tunisia along with Africa-style buildings for whitewashed French colonial structures, like government buildings, railway stations at Sened or Kasserine, etc.

Can we also get the single small building into CMFI? That way we can have North Africa battles in and around inhabited areas (I'm thinking Sidi Bou Zid, etc.)

Wow! Much better than stock. And a welcome addition for Tunisia maps. More palm trees would be great, too. Does CMSF or CMA have those squat "royal palms" and date palms, too? Would be good to supplement LongLeftFlank's palm tree mod, which looks great but is the skinny coconut palm.

CMFI is a great addition to the family and I like it a lot. I think I'll reserve the "love," though, for when it gets to the mainland boot and we can play at Salerno, Anzio, Cassino, and the 10th Mountain Division's Po Valley campaign in the spring of '45.

Re: The tragedy of the US in Vietnam and roads not taken... The other day on a radio talk show I heard an academic trace it even farther back than WWII, the postwar power vacuum, and Dien Bien Phu. He said US President Woodrow Wilson had the opportunity to meet with Ho Chi Minh in Paris in 1919 (yes, Ho was that old), back when Ho admired America and wanted to talk. Wilson refused the meeting, and an early opportunity for a dialogue was lost. I think this came up in the context of the current US political climate, where candidates fight over whether it's better for national security to refuse to talk to dangerous actors or potential military enemies, or whether it's a sign of strength to feel secure enough to to talk to them and thus lower the risks of misunderstandings and war.

Only two points I'd make here: 1. Wanting to know all and control all leads only to frustration. Cultivate an attitude of acceptance and embrace the chaos that is war. Commanders on the ground often had inadequate maps, and IRL one seldom knows from looking at an intended route through distant patch of forest or hillside exactly where there might be 8 square meters of rock or forest obstacles here or there that could throw a tread or force a time-wasting detour. 2. Convenience is a good thing. And not everyone wants to or has the time to manage a large force. But I have to wonder: What's the point of playing a game like CM2 -- which models every individual soldier and bullet fired -- and *not* want to zoom in as close as possible to appreciate it at ground level? It's not a chore; it's the essence and beauty of the game. Given the limited nature of the GUI tools and the engine and the info it gives us, I find the only way not to get tactically burned is to zoom in and try as much as I can to see what my pixeltruppen are seeing.

Ahh, the memories... I had to learn and play the "Rat Patrol" theme song for my middle school band, and played it in the Memorial Day Parade (which actually was very uncool at the height of the Vietnam era, circa 1967-68). I could probably still play the part if someone handed me a kazoo. I think of "Rat Patrol" every time I see those MG-mounted US jeeps -- especially now that I'm seeing them scoot around on my Tunisia CMFI map!